This is the bicentennial of the publication of an anonymous book, “Frankenstein: The modern Prometheus.” We now know the author was Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, 18 at the time. Dr. Frankenstein created life from dead components, employing galvanism, the use of electrical currents to reanimate dead tissue, a popular topic at the time. But once his work was complete, he rejected it. The creature tried to find companionship, but was shunned because of his appearance (I guess he wasn’t a WASP). He took his revenge, becoming a monster, killing and maiming others, and tracking Frankenstein to the North Pole (sorry for the spoiler alert). Frankenstein hadn’t taken responsibility to take care of him and teach him accountability.

Mary and her husband, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, were visiting Lord George Gordon Noel Byron at Villa Diodati, on the shores Lake Geneva. Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont, and Byron’s live-in doctor, John William Polidori, were there as well. Percy had been booted out of Oxford for “extolling the virtues of atheism.” Tsk, tsk. At least there were enough for Canasta.

Shelley was dealing with the loss of a baby. It was the second in a year. Mary’s mother had died 11 days after giving her birth. Psychoanalyst Ronald Britton, tied these problems to Mary’s story, “a spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.” For those caring to reread the classic, there is a new annotated edition, edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Scott Robert, MIT Press, 2017.

Which brings us two centuries forward. In the 21st Century, GOP political engineers constructed a monster candidate. They took parts from a billionaire, a tv clown, a draft dodger, a narcissist, a bully with a nine-year old mentality, a racist, a xenophobe, a misogynist, a white supremist, an anti-Muslim/LGBT/exercise/wholesome food freak, but left out empathy, compassion, suavity, knowledge needed for the job, and a complete apathy for science and logic. They bolted him together and set him on a path to destroy America democracy.

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With the help of Russia, WikiLeaks, Breitbart, Fox Propaganda, National Inquirer, and assorted gremlins, he won the White House. In his first year he abandoned the TPP, leaving Asian trade in the grips of China; left the Paris climate accord, despite 2017 being another high-temp year with severe drought, forest fires, hurricanes, and other bizarre weather; surrounded himself with sycophants, began an attempt to load the Supreme Court and other judgeships, threw out regulations protecting food/water/air safety, failed to respond responsibly to mass murders in the United States, sided with White Supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis; supported a pedophile for a senate seat (and lost!), signed a tax plan that paid himself and his cronies billions at the expense of the rest of us; had the chance to help the Dreamers, child health, and fund the government. No, no, no! Although in 2013, he had said it was the president’s responsibility to keep the government open, he sat on his tiny hands and let it close on the last day of his first year. He had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

A vast Women’s March occurred the day after his inauguration and on the 366th day of his reign.

Carrying signs like “Make America kind again” and “Grab ‘em by the ballot box!” about 5,000 protesters filled the Lansing Capitol lawn, chanting “Hey, hey, ho, ho! Donald Trump has got to go!” and “This is what Democracy looks like.” Cindy Garcia, the wife of undocumented immigrant Jorge Garcia, 39, who was deported to Mexico, drew cheers. Phoebe Hopps, president and founder of Women’s March Michigan, urged women to register to vote and run for elected office, “We are the leaders we are waiting for.”

Frankentrump must be destroyed. Grab your pitchforks! Light the torches!! Resistance is essential.